Pernille Rudlin - Rudlin Consulting

About Pernille Rudlin

Pernille Rudlin was brought up partly in Japan and partly in the UK. She is fluent in Japanese, and lived in Japan for 9 years.

She spent nearly a decade at Mitsubishi Corporation working in their London operations and Tokyo headquarters in sales and marketing and corporate planning and also including a stint in their International Human Resource Development Office.

More recently she had a global senior role as Director of External Relations, International Business, at Fujitsu, the leading Japanese information and communication technology company and the biggest Japanese employer in the UK, focusing on ensuring the company’s corporate messages in Japan reach the world outside.

Pernille Rudlin holds a B.A. with honours from Oxford University in Modern History and Economics and an M.B.A. from INSEAD and she is the author of several books and articles on cross cultural communications and business.

Since starting Japan Intercultural Consulting’s operations in Europe in 2004, Pernille has conducted seminars for Japanese and European companies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UAE, the UK and the USA, on Japanese cultural topics, post merger integration and on working with different European cultures.

Pernille is a non-executive director of Japan House London, an Associate of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia and she is also a trustee of the Japan Society of the UK.

Find more about me on:

Here are my most recent posts

Selling off the tiger cubs

Something that we’ve been noticing for a while is that Japanese trading companies (sogo shosha) have been divesting long held assets, particularly in Japan and in the UK. These assets are known as toranoko or tiger cubs, meaning a treasure in Japanese. It seems the sogo shosha are no longer afraid to sell assets if they do not meet their desired investment efficiency or if the proceeds from the sale exceed medium- to long-term profit expectations.

In the case of Mitsubishi Corporation (who have recently declared they no longer want to be referred to as a trading company), this has included selling off 50% of Lawsons, the convenience store chain, in Japan and in the UK, Princes Foods has been up for sale since 2022.

These divestments are partly to do with the current President, Nakanishi Katsuya, coming from the typically hard headed and unsentimental Heavy Machinery group, making a big break from his predecessor Kakiuichi Takeo’s strategy. Kakiuchi came from the Foods Group and was President of Mitsubishi Corp from 2016 to 2022. Mitsubishi Corp increased its stake in Lawson in 2017, having become the main shareholder in 2001, taking over from Daiei. You might think from the name that Lawson is an American company – and it was, originally, eventually becoming CircleK. More here on Wikipedia.

Other divestments in the food business are of shareholdings which pre-date Kakiuchi – Mitsubishi is also looking to reduce its stake in KFC Japan, the majority of which it acquired in 2007. Princes Foods was acquired in 1989 and in turn has its roots in Mitsubishi’s involvement in canned food dating back to before WWII.*

The divestments are not just in food. Mitsubishi also sold its 20% stake in Fujifilm Diosynth to Fujifilm, in June 2023 and sold off various mining ventures that year too. Other sogo shosha are also divesting in the UK and elsewhere. Sumitomo Corp and its partner Osaka Gas pulled out of a UK water company and an American tyre retailer – the rumour persists they may want to sell off the UK’s Kwik-Fit and associated tyre wholesaling businesses as well. Itochu Corporation also sold its consumer finance business in Indonesia last year.

As to where the money made is then invested – the answer is mainly not Europe, and a focus on energy, minerals and digital. Mitsui is investing in Taiwanese off shore wind power, Mitsubishi in a US data center, Itochu is buying back Itochu Techno Solutions, Marubeni is investing in a Chilean copper mine and Sumitomo Corporation in an Australian LNG project.

*Update 28th May – Mitsubishi Corporation has just announced that it has agreed to sell Princes for £700m to Italian company Newlat.

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

MUFG Bank to invest in Hitachi’s UK based EV bus business

Hitachi set up two companies in the UK in 2023 – Hitachi ZeroCarbon Battery Holding and Hitachi ZeroCarbon Ltd – which lease storage batteries for EV buses. The company has expertise in the maintenance and management of storage batteries, and provides storage batteries on a flat-rate subscription basis.

MUFG Bank has just announced that it will initially invest £7.4m in the business and will further increase its investment in line with Hitachi ZeroCarbon’s business expansion. This is part of its “business co-creation investment” strategy whereby it is increasing the supply of risk funds through co-investments in companies’ new businesses and investments in startups. So far, it has invested in companies such as Astroscale Holdings, a Japanese company which is working on removing space debris.

Hamamatsu to acquire Danish laser and photonic crystal fiber company NKT Photonics

Japanese optical device manufacturer Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. has announced that the Danish Business Authority (DBA) has approved the sale of NKT Photonics to Belgium based Photonics Management Europe S.R.L., a 100% owned subsidiary of Hamamatsu Photonics.

The DBA blocked the planned sale a year ago for security reasons and Hamamatsu reapplied in July 2023. The acquisition was subject to regulatory approvals in Germany, the UK and the US.

Hamamatsu has around 5,500 employees, of whom around 282 are in Europe, Middle East and Africa region, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK. Over 75% of Hamamatsu’s sales are outside Japan.

NKT Photonics is owned by NKT, and is a supplier of high-performance fiber lasers and photonic crystal fibers with around 400 employees in the USA, UK and Switzerland.

Yusen Logistics Benelux to acquire PartsExpress B.V.

NYK group company Yusen Logistics Benelux is to acquire Dutch autoparts delivery company PartsExpress B.V. PartsExpress has 127 employees with operations in the Netherlands and Belgium.

This adds to other recent acquisitions in Europe by Yusen Logistics such as Global Freight Solutions.

Yusen Logistics employs over 8,500 people in Europe, Middle East and Africa, making it one of the 30 largest Japanese employers in the region.

ONO Pharma to set up hub in Europe after acquisition of US company Deciphera

ONO Pharmaceutical has announced its intention to acquire Nasdaq listed US cancer drug developer Deciphera, for US$2.4bn. This is the largest acquisition ONO has ever made, and is in anticipation of its own cancer drug, Opdivo, going off patent in 2028.

Deciphera has already developed Qinlock, a cancer treatment drug and is developing a drug for blood cancer treatment complications and has developed a treatment for benign tumors in joints which is in the final stages of clinical trials in Europe and the U.S. and is scheduled to be submitted for approval in 2024.

Deciphera is headquartered in Massachusetts and has around 400 employees, including operations in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. There is a UK company too, but it is not trading and does not have any employees.

ONO on the other hand only has one subsidiary in Europe, in the UK, employing around 50 people. ONO says it will expand its development and sales hub on the U.S. East Coast to around 170 people and will set up a hub in Europe.

Hitachi to acquire Germany’s MA Micro Automation

Hitachi will acquire German factory automation company MA Micro Automation for 71.5 million euros. MA Micro Automation was established in 2003 and manufactures factory production equipment, transport equipment, image inspection systems, employing around 200 people.

Although it is quite a small scale acquisition, it adds to the $1.4bn acquisition Hitachi made in 2019 of American company JR Automation. JR Automation has an operation in France. It also tips Hitachi’s power balance in Europe further towards Germany, following the acquisition of ABB’s Power Grid Systems in 2020 and adds to the over 60% of employees who are based outside Japan.

Japan’s Oji completes acquisition of Finnish film and packaging producer Walki

Japanese paper and packaging group Oji Holdings Corp completed the acquisition of Finnish film and packaging producer Walki Holding Oy in mid April 2024. Walki was owned by One Equity Partners since 2018. It has 17 production facilities in Finland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Poland, the UK, and China and employs more than 1,700 people.

Oji owns two other European subsidiaries – Kanzan Spezialpapiere in Düren, Germany – with around 300 employees, and the Italian manufacturer of packaging and filling machines, IPI, which it acquired in 2023.

Oji Holdings Corporation was ranked as the sixth world’s largest paper & pulp company in 2022 and has nearly 38,000 employees, 156 subsidiaries worldwide, 86 manufacturing sites throughout Japan, forestry operations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, New Zealand and other countries around the world. Oji Holdings Corporation is listed at the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of approximately US$4bn.

Omron acquires Dutch telemedicine company Luscii Healthtech

Omron Healthcare has acquired Dutch telemedicine company Luscii Healthtech . The company has developed a smartphone app to share biometric data of patients suffering from heart failure and other conditions with medical institutions. By collaborating with telemedicine services provided by the Omron Group in the UK, Germany and other countries, the number of Luscii system users will double to 60,000 in the fiscal year ending March 2027.

Luscii, which was started in 2018, with a small investment from Omron in 2019, and now has around 50 employees. Omron has around 3,300 employees across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and its European headquarters is in the Netherlands.

Muji Europe to appoint administrators

Muji Europe Holdings, the UK based parent company with 55 retail outlets in Finland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Denmark, Ireland and Poland, has filed for administration. It is using the UK “pre pack” administration often favoured by retailers, whereby the sale of the business has been agreed before the administrator is formally appointed.

It is therefore expected that the stores will continue to operate and the staff will continue to be employed.

Muji has said “this is part of a planned strategic restructuring of the business and Muji’s management expect to conclude a deal shortly.” Muji or rather its parent company Ryohin Keikaku had been rumoured to be considering moving the European headquarters to Germany in 2018 because of Brexit. It now has a bonded warehouse in the Netherlands and its warehousing and logistics base is within the EU. We wonder therefore whether this is not just a process for shutting down the UK HQ and setting up a new one in the EU.

Muji Europe Holdings had 168 employees in the UK in 2015/6 and now has only 31. Ryohin Keikaku Europe, also based in the UK, has 143 employees.

As the correspondent for the Toyo Keizai business magazine puts it “there is no need to take it so seriously…its influence in Europe and the United States is limited, and the company has shifted to expanding its sales channels to East Asia”. It has 494 stores in Asia, where recent store openings have been concentrated. The US operations went into bankruptcy in 2020. Ryohin Keikaku’s profit has been declining, so clearly some measures need to be taken. In the Japanese domestic market, these measures have mainly been around opening in more rural areas, often as a concession inside supermarkets, and becoming more locally rooted in terms of the product line up.

Update – Ryohin Keikaku board meeting of April 8th decided that:

“In order to develop our European business in the future, we have decided to liquidate Muji Europe Holdings to eliminate the debts and credits between the parent and subsidiary, and transfer the business to our wholly owned subsidiary, MUJI Europe Limited (UK, hereinafter “MEL”). The company decided to inherit the company and continue the business of its European companies. In conjunction with this reorganization, the company plans to implement structural reforms, including the withdrawal of unprofitable stores and review of its cost structure, in order to improve profits and strengthen its financial base.”

Largest Japanese companies in the UK – 2023

We’ve decided to stop trying to compile the Top 30 largest Japanese employers in the UK by corporate grouping. Partly this is because a substantial number of Japanese companies in the UK have become branches, so do not report their employee totals to Companies House. Another reason is that corporate groups have restructured substantially through divestment, so there are more subsidiaries which are equity affiliates rather than part of the consolidated company group, or are owned by KKR Japan (does this make them Japanese or not?). Finally, many of the largest Japan-owned companies were acquired through acquisition, but are not particularly “Japanese” in terms of their branding or executives.

Instead, we thought we’d look at the largest single Japan-owned companies – and it turns out that there are 31 who have over 1,000 employees. The full list can be downloaded the link below.

The new entrant into this Top 31 in 2023 was Snowfox, a food processing company acquired by Zensho. Snowfox owns Taiko, who make sushi for Waitrose and Sainsburys and also owns the YO! Sushi restaurant chain, as well as chains in the USA and Canada.

In terms of growth, we already covered the fact that some of Dentsu UK’s and Dentsu International’s growth was due to the consolidation into Dentsu UK of its regional subsidiaries in Leeds, Edinburgh and Manchester, but there does also seem to be organic growth, and growth by acquisition too. The other companies showing double digit growth are mostly in the services sector – Yusen Logistics, Mitsubishi HC Capital and NTT Data. Only one manufacturer is showing double digit growth – Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies – a contract development and manufacturing organisation in Teesside.

The automotive sector has shrunk further – Nissan, Marelli (formerly Calsonic Kansei) and Honda Motor Europe had smaller workforces in 2023 than in 2022. Toyota has yet to file its accounts for 2023.

At risk of shrinkage or closure in the years to come look to be Hitachi Rail, whose contracts being built at its Newton Aycliffe plant come to an end in 2024 and Fujitsu, who has told staff that they will run down their Ireland operations, taking on no new contracts. This could be a pilot for what is to come in the UK.

Click here for download of the largest Japanese companies in the UK 2023

Archives